The Rooms in His House
by indigo's ocean
Summary: Alfred must be feeling a remnant of holiday spirit, or something like that, because on his way back from spending New Year's at England's house, he decides to pay Ivan a visit. Ivan may pretend to be friendly, but his house is terrifying. Russia/America
1. Freezing Balls

Today (January 7) is Russia's Christmas celebration, and this is a gift that was promised to my lovely kittyebony13. It was supposed to be a Christmas gift, but things got bogged down and, hey, it still technically _is_ a Christmas gift. Thank you, Ivan! Anyway, Kitty, I hope you enjoy.

Incidentally, I recently read the book A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore. And in it, there's a Russian woman character who always adds "_like bear_" to the end of her sentences. "This food will make you strong, like bear." "The wind is harsh, like bear." "This dog has big paws, like bear." It was really tempting to stick a "like bear" in here somewhere... but alas I'm a good girl and don't give into temptation easily.

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**Chapter One**  
_Russia: Freezing Balls_

Ivan's house did not yet have a fancy electric doorbell, nor was he planning to install one anytime soon. Instead, visitors announced themselves with the big brass knocker (the main part of which was shaped like a snarling bear), and its pounding reverberated through the walls of the empty and slightly dilapidated mansion. It was this noise that woke Ivan that winter's night, and though he lay in barely controlled panic for a few moments, his heart beating an ill-timed staccato in his chest (_artillery, guns, mortar, they're shelling the place, the Germans at Stalingrad, can't let them-_), he soon realized that he was no longer on the battlefields of World War II or any more recent war, and stared at the ceiling.

The faintly glowing hands of the clock on his wall informed him that it was somewhere in the vicinity of one o'clock in the morning. It was dark, too late at night for a visitor, and the halls of his house were almost freezing. (Outside, it really _was_ freezing.) No hour for a visitor, a decent visitor. Ivan got up anyway.

He turned on the single light in the entryway by pulling the thin metal chain hanging down from the lamp on the ceiling, and unlocked his door, stifling a yawn. The bitter wind of late winter had died down, and outside was simply a dull, bone-chilling cold that crept in through the crack in the door, making Russia wonder where he had put his old house slippers and whether it was worth it to go look for them at all. It also let in something even less welcome, a loud, almost strident voice that could only belong to one person.

"Hey, Russia! What's up?" Alfred said loudly, grinning through the crack in the door.

Ivan was used to occasions like this by now, though he couldn't say they were particularly welcome. Nations barging in and out of his large, half-empty house all hours of the day and night - night, because _certain nations_ had no concept of different time zones. Back when the house had been always full and always clean, when he was known collectively as the U.S.S.R., things like this didn't happen. Nations were too afraid. Ivan wondered if he had fallen in their esteem - probably - or if they had come to realize he was not half as powerful as he had always seemed - probably that too.

Alfred was still chattering. "- and so I figured, 'Hey, I'm near Russia's house and it'll be real easy to drop by, he probably misses me _loads_ after that business with Georgia - and I don't mean _my_ Georgia - so why the hell not?'" He gave that easy grin that Russia had so loathed all through last century, and rubbed a sheepish hand at the back of his neck. "I forgot there's a time difference. It's only ten-thirty back in London." He gave a nervous laugh.

Ivan looked down at him, tempted to shut the door but also cognizant it would probably get broken down if he did so. Alfred - America had the habit of being a little too earnest, a little too sincere... Making doors when he couldn't find his own, not caring what he broke. "You do know it's one o'clock in the morning," he said pleasantly.

"Yeah, I know, I know," Alfred said, and there was exasperation mixed with sheepishness in his voice. "I was just dropping by and my plane out doesn't arrive until tomorrow afternoon..."

"So I am expected to entertain you here until you leave?" Russia asked pleasantly.

Alfred nodded. "Yep! And boy, it'll look great for the press; superpowers getting along like best friends after the Cold War, no hard feelings..." With his face tilted up slightly at just that angle, and that ridiculous, little-boy grin on his face, he looked rather like a dog. And not a wolfhound or a husky; rather, one of those large, blond shaggy dogs. What were they called again? Ivan wondered. Golden... golden something.

The pause stretched out between them and Ivan's thoughts strayed from dogs to an idle curiosity about just how Alfred would react were the door shut and locked in his face. Even if he broke it down, Ivan wouldn't get out of bed. He could stay warm and comfortable underneath his covers while Alfred tried to fix the damage he had done without causing an international incident, there, that would be it. Even if America didn't have any hard feelings about the Cold War... Or pretended not to, anyway.

"Speaking of cold," Alfred began as the silence grew chilly and awkward. He shuffled his feet on the doormat, which had once read _Welcome_ in Cyrillic characters, the letters having long since faded and been worn away by generations of feet. "Can I come in?" He gave his best ingratiating smile, which, in the end, was merely widening his usual hapless grin. "It's freezing _balls_ out here and -"

"Da, da, fine," Ivan replied, cutting Alfred off before he could elaborate on how, exactly, it was 'freezing balls.' His skill with foreign (English) idiom was not the best, but he had a good idea what the statement implied. There was a similar expression in Russian, anyway. Reluctantly, he broke off his thoughts about language to step aside and hold the door open. It creaked rather horribly. "Come in. There is food and vodka in the kitchen. Stay away from the liquor on the top shelf; that is mine only. I am going back to bed."

"Right," Alfred said briskly, dusting a few flakes of snow of his old bomber jacket. So it was snowing outside? Hopefully it wouldn't pile up too much by tomorrow afternoon, Ivan thought with a yawn, otherwise who knew how long America would stay? Invasions into Russia tended to get rather bogged down, especially in the wintertime...

He had turned back around and was almost out of the entryway and into the long, dilapidated hallway when America's voice stopped him. "Hey, Ivan," he said, using the nation's given name for the first time since he arrived. "What kind of color would you say your pajamas are?"

Ivan turned back halfway, giving America his best insincere smile. "Pink," he said (even though they were really more of a pale peach color), and shut the living room door behind him.

* * *

So like, I really want to find a Russian phrase that is the equivalent to "It's freezing balls out here," because, I mean, they've _got_ to have one. This is also the section where I admit my sad ignorance about Russian culture (though I have researched a bit) and enjoin you to correct whatever you feel is necessary. Since this fic has rather short chapters, updates should be fairly frequent, but I'm a busy girl so don't hold me to that.

_Do svidanija_ (goodbye) and see you next time!


	2. Top Shelf Vodka

So I was writing part of this chapter in the library at school and these obnoxious underclassmen came and sat at my table with the intention of harrassing me. But A Gentleman (who shall remain anonymous) saw my plight and came to sit with me, thereby giving me someone with whom to converse and eventually scaring those annoying boys away. It was really very nice of him! When someone does something nice to you, don't you want to tell everyone? So I am spreading around his Act of Kindness with my Sincere Gratitude.

Also, I managed to use "strong like bear" in this chapter, at least twice. Ahaha...

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**Chapter Two**  
_America: Top-Shelf Vodka_

"_Stay away from the liquor on the top shelf, da_?" Alfred remarked in a high-pitched, mocking tone - but only _after_ Ivan had disappeared down the hall; yeah, he had mostly gotten over his fear of Russia but damn the nation could be scary if he tried and for a second there on the doorstep Alfred had thought he was going to get _nuked_ or something, I mean, seriously, you'd think Ivan would've been happier to get a visitor because Russia seemed like a pretty lonely nation, especially in the winter, but what_-ever_.

He looked around the large foyer of Ivan's house with great curiosity. All of his previous visits had been constrained by stiff, nearly stifling diplomatic formality, even the visits that he made in the spirit of "_let's mooch off Ivan's vodka stores and eat everything in his pantry even though it doesn't look or taste like hamburger_" friendship. Somehow Ivan had always contrived to be at his shoulder, smiling but icily forbidding, letting him know quite well that he was not welcome and international relations would be better if he just went _home_.

It definitely gave him something to complain about, both privately and at UN meetings. Ivan always took the complaints with that same frigid, terrifyingly polite and friendly smile that he always had, ocassionally asking whether America ever planned to reimburse Russia for the vodka that had been consumed during one of the visits. Other nations, England especially, had a habit of pointing out that Alfred would have nothing at all to complain about if he stopped visiting Ivan's house altogether. Of course, if that happened, post-Cold War diplomacy would shatter. Or so Alfred liked to think.

But he wasn't here to debate with himself about the purpose of visiting Russia's house; he was here to... Well, more or less, he was here to kill time until his plane arrived, and if Ivan wasn't going to entertain him, then Alfred would have to entertain himself. The front room of Russia's house was huge and dark, with a two-winged staircase looming out of the shadows in the back. Although the light above the door was on, it didn't do much to illuminate the rest of the structure, and Alfred shivered as he took in the gloomy sight. Good thing he knew where the kitchen was.

He hurried through dark, high-ceilinged hallways, his hands shoved in his pockets and his shoulders hunched against the frigid air that filled the house. Ivan's place was always _so_ cold and Alfred wondered how he could stand it. _He_ had enough trouble with winters up north, and even though Florida joked he was acting like a baby boomer retiree, he had always enjoyed spending the coldest months of the years with his southernmost states.

The kitchen (the third door to the left) wasn't much warmer, although there was a faint radiant heat in the air left from dinner, or so Alfred thought. He flicked on the light with relish; even though Ivan's kitchen wasn't the cheeriest of places, it was domestic enough to offset the general creepiness of the house. The peeling, faded gilt wallpaper that paneled this room and the rest of the house hearkened back to bygone days when Russia was a huge empire of strength and beauty. Now there was a thin film of dust covering nearly everything, even the pots and pans hanging from the ceiling. Alfred remembered when he had toured this part of Ivan's house, back in the days directly before the breakup of the Soviet Union. It had been gleaming then, hung with fresh meat and dried, aromatic spices, and pots of food had been bubbling on the old wood stove. That had been replaced with a chrome gas one now, which gleamed oddly in the light from the bare bulb.

Alfred had never been let into Russia's house without strict supervision by his boss, Ivan, or Ivan's boss, and this was the first time he had been allowed to explore for himself. He peeked into the oven and each of the cupboards, noting that there were many empty spaces on the shelves and cobwebs had begun to gather in the corner. On a whim, he looked under the stove and the refrigerator, where much the same was happening. It looked like Ivan was good at scrubbing countertops, but bad at sweeping underneath things or doing anything other than a superficial cleaning. That had probably been Lithuania's job; Alfred knew from experience that Toris was good at most anything domestic.

"Well, that's that, then," he said, kicking a cupboard. It made a loud banging noise that startled him and he flinched away before laughing it off. It wasn't broken. He didn't have to worry about Ivan's reaction. "Maaaan this house is so _cold_," Alfred continued loudly, having grown tired of the eerie silence that pervaded the dark halls and pressed in on the dimly lit kitchen. He brought his hands out of his pockets to cup them in front of his mouth, breathing on them - as if his breath could even begin to counteract the chill that wafted through the air.

"Okay. Warmth. Something warm..." Alfred had always enjoyed speaking aloud, whether or not there was anyone listening. "Alcohol is warm, right? Ha ha ha..." He crossed the bare floor to Ivan's pantry, set behind a heavy oaken door. Nearly half of the available space was taken up by vodka bottles of all types, large and small, thick and thin, fancy and unlabeled. Alfred's eyes were drawn almost at once to the liquor on the top shelf, bottles he had never thought to try before but by which he was now suddenly tempted, after Ivan had expressly forbid him...

"Ah, screw it," he decided aloud. "He's not even being a good host." Being a good host was important, Alfred had learned from all of his bosses - even Thomas Jefferson. Japan thought it was very important, too, so it _had_ to mean something. He dragged over a chair from the dining room table. Its legs made an awful screeching noise against the cement, but after Alfred had held himself still for nearly a minute and hadn't heard anything, he decided Ivan probably hadn't woken.

Carefully, he stepped up onto the seat of the chair. Even though it creaked and wobbled dangerously, it brought him level with the top shelf. Rather bitterly, Alfred reflected that _Ivan_ probably didn't need a chair to reach the top shelf vodka; he was so _annoyingly_ tall and everything. With that thought adding to his spiteful courage, he grabbed a slightly dusty bottle and hauled it down. It was large and surprisingly heavy, and made of thick blue glass. He searched it for a label - there was none. But it had to be vodka right? Maybe it was special vodka. "Vodka to make you strong, like bear," Alfred said in an exaggerated Russian accent, and snickered to himself.

"I will be strong, like bear," he said, keeping his accent, as stepped down from the chair and began to pry the cork from the bottle. He didn't remember where Ivan kept cups and things and wasn't about to bother looking for them. Why dirty extra dishes when he could simply drink from the bottle? Now that was how to be a good guest.

The fumes from the vodka reached his nose before he even lifted the bottle, heavy with the essence of alcohol. This would be strong - of course it was strong, Alfred thought, it was from Ivan's _private stores_! So there! Lifting the bottle to his lips, he took a large swallow...

... and immediately spit it out. "_Phwoar!_" The blue glass bottle dropped from his finger and colorless liquid sprayed across the kitchen floor, spattering on the chair, the table, the counter, Alfred's shoes as he choked, grabbing at his throat, which felt like it was on _fire_. That was... That was worse than that moonshine whiskey he had tried during the Prohibition, which had been brewed in a bathtub and _ugh_ he felt like he was going to die, like his mouth might burn up just from breathing. Tears were streaming form his eyes and he was doubled over, hands on his knees, and oh _God_ that was the most disgusting liquor he had ever tried. What was it, pure alcohol? No wonder Ivan was always so _out there_.

It tasted like gasoline, ethanol, rubbing alcohol... As he coughed, Alfred made (and promptly forgot) several vows of abstinence from all alcohol, ever again. It took him a while to recover and then, wiping his eyes, he frowned at the mess he had made of Ivan's kitchen. But the asshole deserved it!

"Strong like bear, my _ass_," Alfred muttered angrily, kicking at the bottle and causing more vodka to spill out onto the floor. Was it just him, or did the alcohol seem to be burning a hole through the cheap linoleum floor? He turned away in disgust. If _that_ was the sum total of Ivan's precious liquor... Ha. It deserved the floor, and Ivan _deserved_ to have a hole in his linoleum. The kitchen was boring now.

Alfred turned on his heel, wiping at his mouth. He went back into the hall, not bothering to turn off the kitchen light. Ivan needed more lights on in his house, anyway - notwithstanding the fact that it was almost two in the morning here. At Alfred's house it was just dinnertime, and in England only eleven o'clock, so he was wide awake.

What to do, then? Ivan didn't even direct him to a room where he could _sleep_. What did he expect - for Alfred to curl up in the corner of the kitchen like some kind of dog? He'd probably be frozen in the morning! So that was the first order of business - finding a room where he could go to bed. And if he happened to use the occasion to be nosy and poke around Russia's house a bit, who could blame him?

Even though the house was dark and cold... eerie... chilling... Alfred shivered and his step quickened down the hallway. He wasn't scared - he was the hero!

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I do hope America's characterization is alright here. Please let me know what you think. Like any and every author, I truly appreciate (read: worship, obsess over) reviews. Ta!


	3. Hegemony

Look! Finally, in this chapter, footnotes! Because, after all, what's a good canon Hetalia fic without footnotes chock full of Wikipedia-ed historical information? Unfortunately I did not employ Wikipedia for these footnotes. Perhaps I should have. I will have to start using it soon because I know fuck-all about Russian history and... it probably shows. I also know next to nothing about the Russian language or, or anything like that. But I make up for it by being strong, like bear.

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**Chapter Three**  
_Russia: Hegemony_

His sheets had cooled considerably since he had gotten up to answer the door, and Ivan added that to his litany of grievances against Alfred. Waking him up at an unreasonable hour, invading his house in all but name, and now cold sheets. Even though the cold didn't particularly bother Ivan, who was more accustomed to a cold bed than he would like to admit - it was more the principle of the thing.

Ivan tried not to think about what Alfred was doing, wandering around in the drafty halls of his dilapidated house. Picking up things, getting his _fingerprints_ on things, breaking things. He shifted restlessly in his bed. Because Alfred's visit had been unannounced (to the highest degree), he had not been given time to prepare the guest suite. Better Alfred get lost all night in a maze of dusty corridors than complain incessantly about the run-down state into which he had let the rooms lapse. If he recalled correctly, the once rich brocaded curtain hanging around the bed had nearly rotted through.

And Alfred would probably be too scared to go much further past the kitchen, anyway; Ivan knew of the nation's almost superstitious fear of the dark. He wouldn't be able to find his way into any bad places; Ivan would probably get up in the morning to find him curled up under the kitchen table like a dog. He forced himself to drift into a calmer state, shoving the other nation out of his mind.

Ivan slipped into one of his favorite daydreams - Russia, the supreme power; the world controlled by Russia; spreading his ideas throughout the world. Himself, his house warm and full again, the sun slanting in through jewelled windows as he sat surrounded by friends, surrounded by people who smiled at him, spoke with him in his own language.

But as he sank into genuine sleep, his dream changed, twisting subtly, perhaps influenced by the presence of his Cold War rival. The light hardened, becoming the color of sun reflected off snow - harsh and white. His companions' faces darkened - Lithuania regained his old, hunted look; Latvia shrank and trembled; Estonia grew cold and his glasses more opaque. France, England, China, America became disdainful, their speech changing from fluent Russian into English.

Language, the sign of a nation's hegemony. What was the most widely spoken language in the world? English. _Whose_ English? America's.

Ivan tossed and turned under his blankets, muttering in his sleep. Within his shallow dreaming, the nations began to laugh at him, loudly and raucously, Alfred's laugh, and he was speaking in badly accented English now too. They were no longer in his house, they were in Alfred's, its opulence accentuated with trophies Ivan recognized from his own glory days. But worst of all, the event that made the dream transform into a nightmare, was when he realized he could no longer remember Russian, his mother tongue, his _heritage_.

A cold wind blew through the room and Ivan woke with a gasp, already covered in a thin sheen of sweat. His nostrils flared - on the breeze he smelled cold, death, the sweet, musty scent of rotting things. It wasn't a part of his dream.

Ivan struggled upright, out of the sheets that had twisted around his agitated body. The wind, the draft - in his annoyance about Alred's arrival he had forgotten the rooms weren't locked, the _rooms_, the places in his house where no one ever went. And he hadn't warned Alfred about them either, had only told him to stay out of the top shelf in his pantry.

The nation got out of bed and crammed his feet into his winter boots, which had been lying discarded by the closet. He laced them deftly with fingers accustomed to the job, then threw on a greatcoat over his peach colored pajamas and everpresent scarf. He wasn't in a hurry because he wanted to rescue Alfred - by all means, just _let_ the nation suffer. But he didn't like _those_ doors being opened and he didn't want Alfred to spread word of what was on the other side, either.

Before he exited his room he sniffed the air again - there was a distinct scent of snow and blood, clear enough to tell him that Alfred had indeed gone down _there_ - and stepped out of his rooms. He moved down the halls with the quick surety of someone who has lived in the same place for most of his very long life, skirting the area of moldering wooden floorboards just outside his room and avoiding the occasional article of discarded furniture or icy patch on the floor.

The light in the kitchen was on and Ivan peered in just to make sure Alfred wasn't sitting there and the opened doors hadn't been simply a remnant of his nightmare. But the room was empty; just as Ivan had left it that evening except for a dropped bottle and spilled liquor spreading across the floor. The bottle was blue. Ivan sighed. He had _warned_ Alfred to stay away from the top shelf, but of course his warning had been deliberately defied. Alfred had probably thought the bottles on the top shelf were the highest quality vodka he was saving for himself. In actuality, they were sent from his sister Belarus, and he hadn't yet dared to open them, unsure of whether they were meant as a gift or an assassination attempt.

With Belarus, the two were essentially the same. His curiosity getting the better of him, Ivan bent over the spilled mess and sniffed it cautiously. It smelled like almost pure alcohol; he had no idea whether it was supposed to be vodka or not. Well, no wonder Alfred had dropped the bottle on the floor. And once Ivan retrieved him, he would be sure to make Alfred clean up the mess.

That was that, then. He turned off the light in the kitchen and went back to the hall, navigating in the semidarkness of his house. Alfred had lit the chandelier set in the high-ceilinged chamber just ahead; its diffuse glow, made to mimic candlelight, cast long shadows across the floor and walls. He hadn't been through these rooms in a long time, not since the breakup of the USSR, and the nearly twenty year abandonment showed, and showed badly. The floors and furniture were covered with a thick, choking layer of dust, and the air smelled of must and mold. Ivan coughed behind his hand. At he had one advantage - Alfred's footprints were long, swishing lines in the carpet of dust, easily followed.

They led Ivan down a hallway and to the right, and as he grew closer to those doors, the smell of death and snow and freezing intensified. The decay of the house grew more pronounced - Ivan had stopped coming here during the latter days of the _Sovetsky Soyuz _**(1)**, and had forbidden the others to do the same. But of course Alfred's footprints continued onward, like Ivan knew they would. The nation had too much curiosity, much more than was good for him.

"Perhaps this will cure him, da?" Ivan asked, and that thought gave him enough motivation to push aside the large, scarred wooden doors that were hanging ajar at the end of the corridor. Immediately the smells intensified, and an icy wind blew out from the interior. He tightened his coat around him and stepped inside grimly. He hadn't been _here_ since 1812... or was it 1942? **(2)** The rooms hadn't changed much in either case - snow still piled up in the corners, the dirty, smudged panes of glass in the window were fronted by a latticework of ice. Under the heaping, blowing snow, he knew that the remnants of Russia's conquests - but not _Ivan's_ conquests. He determinedly kept his eyes _up_, not trying to see under the thin, lumpy layer of snow.

"Alfred!" It took him a while to see the idiot nation, who was neraly obscured by a thick whirl of ice and snow, a miniature blizzard in the center of the room. He waded forward, trying not to think about what he was stepping on, what gave way slightly beneath his feet, and placed a heavy hand on Alfred's shoulder with perhaps slightly more force than was necessary.

Alfred's head lolled back a little and Ivan's false, forced smile faded somewhat. He didn't look good. His glasses were covered with a thin layer of frost, and ice had spiderwebbed across the transparent surfaces. His hands were clenched at his sides and his eyes stared somewhere slightly above Ivan's head, vacant, empty.

Ivan grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him. "Alfred, Alfred..." The cold wormed its way under his scarf and into his jacket. Alfred's breath came in barely visible clouds of white. Despite himself, Ivan was beginning to become worried. "Alfred? America?"

Suddenly, Alfred startled and blinked. His head stopped rocking limply back and forth with Ivan's shaking as he regained consciousness, or something like that. "Alfred, you're so dumb -" Ivan began to say, then stopped as the nation's eyes suddenly fluttered shut and he crumpled. Ivan barely managed to grab hold of him in time to stop him from falling onto the floor of snow and whatever lay beneath. Sighing, he slung Alfred over his shoulder with a grunt and carried him out of the room.

He made sure to lock the door behind him.

* * *

**(1)** The _Sovetsky Soyuz_ - Russian name for the Soviet Union. The full name was _Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik_ and don't ever ask me to pronounce that.  
**(2)** _1812 _- Napoleon invaded Russia; the Russians burned their land ahead of Napoleon until he was finally forced to make a disastrous retreat in the middle of the Russian winter. _1942 _- Germany's Sixth Army's ill-fated siege on Stalingrad.

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I'd like to thank the Academy - I mean, all my reviewers (sorry, bad jokes) and apologize for not getting back to you guys. Things should get a little less hectic around here in the month of February and so I will endeavor to reply to your reviews at that time. Hopefully. We'll see. Stay tuned for the next chapter, in which Alfred wakes up somewhere he never would have expected! Maybe. I haven't quite decided what will happen yet. (_Dun dun dun_...)


	4. General Winter

Excuse me, did I say updates should be faster in February? That was a slip of the tongue. Did I say I'd be less busy? That was a downright lie. Ahaha but really, I have to admit, the free time I've had this month was taken up by roleplaying things like France and England. With me as France. I love France. Did I mention he's my favorite Hetalia character? And one of the few I'm good at. I do Russia too, but I always make him too creepy and then Russia/America gets all kinky and sadomasochistic, which might not be a _bad_ thing but... yeah. I'm all for _l'amour_.

* * *

**Chapter Four**  
_America: General Winter_

His dreams were filled with howling wind and swirling snow. The blizzard wrapped itself around him like tendrils of fog or the bloody, hazy smoke that hovered across the land after a battle, caressing his arms, wrapping around his waist, stroking through his hair and invading his lungs through his open mouth. He was suspended in a net of fear and cold, and everything was white. He was numb. His mind - his mind felt frozen, coated by ice, ready to shatter at the slightest thought like icicles falling, diamond hard and yet so brittle.

This was not _him_. This was something _else_.

Beneath the snow, there were dead things, and they were calling.

Alfred jolted and came awake with a shudder and a gasp, fingers scrabbling and digging themselves into - snow? Iced-over dirt? ...Sheets? His mind whirled for several moments in a dizzying flurry of memory and sensation - snow, ice, warmth, blankets - and then snapped back into focus. More or less. He was on a bed, he was warm, and his glasses were missing.

The ceiling was a smudgy, white blur. Reluctantly, Alfred snaked a hand out from underneath all-too-warm blankets, patting the pillows and looking for the nightstand on the right side of his bed, where he always left Texas during the night. For some reason, it seemed to have vanished. He swallowed, tasting leftover fear in the back of his throat, and said, "My glasses?" His voice came out slightly querulously, like an old man's, and so he tried again. "I can't find my glasses."

That was usually the cue for Tony, silently present as usual, to place the cool frames into his hand. But this time, a slightly childish voice replied, "They are here," and he felt a tiny thump as the frames dropped carelessly onto his chest.

Well. That was weird. But it couldn't be...

He unfolded the glasses carefully and put them back on. He always felt better - more American - when Texas was with him like that. Then he blinked, the ceiling finally coming into focus and with it, the rest of the room.

"Now that you are awake," the same childish and frostily pleasant voice said from the side of his bed, "I wish you to clean up the mess you made in my kitchen. Vodka is not for spilling, da? It is for drinking. And I did tell you to stay away from -"

"So it wasn't a dream," Alfred said slowly, almost musingly, as he turned his head and fixed vague blue eyes on Ivan's stocky form. "The cold, and the snow..." His voice was soft and sounded entirely like the brash, laughter-filled tone he usually adopted. Ivan looked a bit shock. Even Alfred himself was slightly surprised.

"It was not a dream..." Ivan agreed after several moments, his voice slow, the chilly tone replaced by one resembling bewilderment. Then his mask was back in place as he adopted his patently fake smile. "But it is four o'clock in the morning, is it not?" He paused, tilting his head to the side, still with that absurd pleasantness. "Perhaps I will reconsider having you clean up the vodka tonight. Tomorrow, then."

Alfred blinked. The... oh. The liquor he had spilled; he remembered that. "Oh," he said out loud. "So... I can sleep?" He hated how he sounded like a frightened child.

Ivan looked at him, the cold gaze undiluted by his smile. "On the floor," he said. "This is my bed." And then he caught Alfred's look of disgust - he was to sleep on that dirty _floor_? This was Ivan's _bed_? Ivan had _slept here_? - and his smile, if anything, widened. "I joke," he continued, and stood from the rickety wooden chair placed at the side of Alfred's bed. "I will -"

"What was it?" Alfred asked suddenly, almost desperately, suddenly terrified at the thought of being here, in this house, alone, with that... "In the room? What was it?" he repeated when Ivan looked down at him blankly.

Ivan's face remained blank as he processed the question. "General Winter," he said. "An..." His gaze grew faintly troubled, and Alfred noticed that, somewhere along the way, he had lost his pleasant smile. "An ally of mine."

"You..." _have terrifying allies_, Alfred wanted to say. "You keep him in your house?" he said instead, incredulously. That - General Winter - was dangerous. Dangerous and terrifying and - Alfred didn't like thinking about it.

"That wing," Ivan said, waving vaguely towards the direction of the terrifying room. "That is all his. It has been his from the beginning." His eyes met Alfred's wide and slightly horrified ones, and his pleasant - sadistically pleasant - smile returned. "I am not so weak to succumb to him." He said that in a way that clearly insinuated that Alfred, by succumbing to General Winter, had proved himself a weak nation.

Alfred sent him a glare, but he was still feeling a dull chill throughout his body and his mind was rather too numb to make it really effective. "So you have snow. In your house," he said, rather idiotically.

"Da," Ivan agreed, and that tone in his voice couldn't be anything but condescendingly mocking. "In my house." He leaned forward slightly and Alfred involuntarily pressed himself back against the pillows, because something in his face had changed and it was now pleasantly... terrifying. "And," he continued, his voice low, "during the winter he slides through the crack under the door and walks through the house, and if he touches you, you freeze until the -"

"Stop it!" Alfred said, his face white. It took him a moment to realize that he had scrambled all the way to the other sideo f the bed, and then he was rather embarrassed. "I mean," he said, striving for a more manly tone where his voice wouldn't crack and he wouldn't sound like a frightened child, "that's ridiculous. That can't happen." It was painfully obvious that he was mostly trying to convince himself.

Ivan - almost - chuckled. "Da," he said again, "and now I am leaving you to your sleep." He turned to leave again. Alfred watched his broad back until he was nearly at the door, his hand on the light switch, and then he couldn't hold back any longer.

"Wait!" he said, and he _still_ sounded like a child. He bit his lip as Ivan stopped. "Will you - I mean - with me -" he said haltingly, unable to get the words out. He couldn't ask Ivan for this. It was too embarrassing, too weak, and Ivan had been his enemy for nearly fifty years and this wasn't something your biggest rival was supposed to see, or know about.

Ivan looked at him blankly.

"I mean -" Alfred said again, then swallowed. "Please..." He looked away, anywhere but at Ivan. "Stay," he said, scooting to the side so that there was room for two in the bed. "Because..." _I'm scared_. "I don't like being alone. Now. At... night." He was babbling.

Ivan gave him a considering look, and for a moment Alfred was terrified that he would say "_Niet_" and keep walking out the door, leaving Alfred to huddle in the blankets that smelled like vodka and dust, trying to keep himself warm, shivering, in the _dark_...

The light went off and Alfred had to clamp his mouth shut so as not to scream. "So -" he said, pretending his voice wasn't shaking slightly, "so, you're not going to stay, that's fine, I was just kidding, really..."

In the dark Ivan was suddenly beside the bed again, looming like a ghost, but a familiar one, pale and smiling that childish smile. "You do not want me after all, America?" he asked. Somehow, when Alfred had been determinedly _not looking _at him leaving, he had shed his coat and his boots. His scarf was still wrapped around his neck like some absurd sort of snake.

Alfred was surprised, but gratefully so. "No," he said, "no, you can..." He pulled back the covers, realizing - belatedly - that Ivan must have taken off his bomber jacket and his shoes. Which was... weird to think about, so he didn't dwell on it. "Um. Thank you."

"Is nothing," Ivan replied, climbing into bed. He kept himself to the side of the bed - they were as far away as possible. "I would do the same for any child." He drew the covers up to his chin and _then_ removed his scarf, folding it carefully and placing it on the floor.

Alfred bristled, probably blushing. He opened his mouth to object - _I am _not_ a child!_ - and then clamped it shut again. It was nearly completely dark in the room, and with just Ivan's silhouette showing, he could pretend that he was Arthur or Toris or someone else. Anyone else. And at least there was _someone_ with him, someone who would protect him against that room - the blowing snow, the -

There were several moments of silence, then Alfred, curled on his side and nearly falling off the bed with his desire to avoid touching Ivan at all, whispered, "What does it feel like? When he comes out? General Winter."

For another few moments after he spoke, there was no response, and Alfred began to worry that Ivan had fallen asleep. Then, out of the darkness, came an answering whisper. "It feels... like death."

"Oh," Alfred replied in a small voice. He suddenly wanted to reach out, across the insurmountable gap between them, and maybe take touch Ivan's shoulder or something, comfort him. But his hand seemed crushed by the weight of a hundred years of history, and so he didn't move, instead listening to Ivan's soft breathing until he fell asleep.

* * *

(Did anyone else think that was terribly, fluffily cute?) Um. So yeah. My New Year's resolution was to update _something_ twice a month and I've already broken it - but don't worry, I'll just have to make that up in March. Thanks to all my readers and reviewers, and please tell me what you think of this chapter! Next chapter: Ivan's thoughts on this (not quite) unexpected turn of events.


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